“It would be well if these were the only religious persecutions; but,
alas! those on the ether side prove the truth of the Founder. ‘I came
not to send peace [on earth]. but a sword’” (Matt.
x. 34). Witness the long and relentless pers cutions of the
Waldenses and Albigenses, the sixty seven crusades, the wars of
Charlemagne against the Saxons, and the thirty years' war of Germany.
Witness, again, the persecution of the Guises, the Bartholomew
slaughter, the wars of Louis XIV, on the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, the Dragonnades, and the wars against Holland, Witness the
bitter rersecutions stirred up by Luther, which spread to England and
Scotland. No wars so lasting, so relentless, so bloody as religious
wars. It has been no thin red line.